Fish-Blooded Bourgeois

Translucent plastic binders are the only possible compensation for having to go to class. Plastic, plastic, plastic, and of course green rollerball pens and shiny highlighters with ink that smells like killing brain cells. I’m on an eternal quest for the holy grail of paper holder gadgets, a new-millenium Trapper Keeper that will make me organized, creative, and above all one of the cool kids; this term, the leading candidates are all clamp binders. Oh, for the life of an Office Depot mind-control robot!

This is shaping up to be one of the most bland and unexciting academic terms ever - I’ve got an applied math requirement, a couple of random classes that don’t do anything but add heft to my schedule, and one course where the professor spent the entire organizational meeting trying to think up clever ways not to teach the class. “I haven’t taught undergraduates in 30 years,” he said. “I’d also encourage everyone to go check out Introduction to Geophysics, the prof there is very talented and engaging and if you petition, it can probably fulfill the requirement for this course, which I apparently don’t want to teach at all. We’ll have another meeting on Wednesday, and if only three of you show up I’ll probably cancel the class altogether.”

The useful thing about going to a small school is that the five of us already knew each other, and with one glance we were able to establish that no one was going to let him weasel out of his pedagogical duties. So soon we’ll find out if this is a “bitter compatriot of the people” unenthusiastic prof, or an “out-of-touch makes the problem sets way too difficult” unenthusiastic prof, or in the best-case scenario, a “randomly spends the whole lecture talking about his research” unenthusiastic prof. This guy’s research is the kind of thing that brought me into geophysics. Mmm, deep earth structure and low-velocity zones at the core-mantle boundary.
*slurp*

Meanwhile, I’d encourage the rest of you to check out this brief history of the trapper hat, which I found whilst looking for 80s-retro Trapper Keeper fan sites. Also, those of you who are into blogs should fill out this splendid and worthwhile award-nomination form. No, it’s not the bloggies, it’s just francis being absolutely hilarious.

Or else, via Tinka: the super-secret diaries of Legolas et al.
*ahem*

Day 30:
All this paddling about in boats is hell on my complexion.
Aragorn obviously starting to find Frodo strangely attractive. Sam will kill him if he tries anything.
Still the prettiest.

Last but not least, I’m getting a bit sick of blogger and have been contemplating wanking out with movable type, greymatter, or some other as-yet-unknown blog product. If anyone has experience with these matters, I’d like to hear about it. Probably laziness and apathy will win out as usual, but you never know.